Visions of a "Musical America" in the Radio Age

In the United States during the 1920s and 1930s a loose-knit group of activists promoting what they called good music encountered the rise of commercial radio. Recognizing a tremendous resource, they sought to enlist radio in their cause, and in many ways were successful. However, commercial radio also transformed the activists, subverting an important part of their vision of a musical America: widespread preference for good music in the public at large. Instead, good music became the premium product line of commercial radio and the activists became more nearly realistic about their role in society. Charles Seeger offered a scholarly history of this effort in his 1957 paper, "Music and Class Structure in the United States." This dissertation uses the model of cultural formation from Seeger's essay as a guide to the transformation of those he calls "'make-America-musical' missionaries," between 1918 and 1935. In addition this study uses theories on community presented by Thomas Bender in Community and Social Change in America, and theories on democracy presented by Robert H. Wiebe in Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy, to further illuminate Seeger's model. Views expressed by representatives of the National Federation of Music Clubs, described by Karen J. Blair as "the largest and most influential organization uniting women's musical societies," and by conductor Walter Damrosch, who served on the NBC Advisory Panel, occupy central places in this study, as does the publication Musical America, an omnibus music periodical founded in 1898 by British émigré John C. Freund for the stated purpose of "development of music in America." Reports in Musical America, together with proceedings of the federation and of Music Teachers National Conference, and a series of books published under the auspices of the federation from 1924-29 to train music club members, function as core sources. These reveal the transformation of these activists from their expansive speculation in the years following the Great War, through a period of resistance to trends in the larger culture that peaks in the middle of the 1920s, to their accommodation and enthusiastic acceptance of commercial radio as a home for good music

Benthic biodiversity and physico-chemical parameters of acid mine drainage, acid impacted and nonimpacted streams

South Fork of Sand Lick Creek, Logan County, West Virginia, drains an abandoned coal strip mine which had exploited Pottsville series coalbeds (Pennsylvania strata). These strata outcrop throughout southwestern West Virginia. North Fork watershed is relatively unchanged, save a small roadcut throughout. South Fork benthic community had not recovered although mining activity had ceased about 20 years earlier. Benthic communities were analyzed with detrended correspondence analysis (DCA). Family Chironomidae predominated South Fork benthic community throughout the study. North Fork’s benthic community had as major contributors acid resistant caddisfly family Hydropsychidae, mayfly family Baetidae, and stonefly families Perlodidae and Nemouridae. Family Chironomidae exploited spate events and episodically become a major community component. Sand Lick Creek’s benthic community was a subset of North Fork’s community with similar indices but many fewer organisms. Spates were found to be the greatest contributing factor to community variation. North Fork pH was above 6.5 (high 7.66), falling to 5.23 only during a spate event. South Fork pH ranged from 3.36 to 4.82. Sand Lick Creek pH broadly ranged from 3.88 to 6.04. Spates changed North Fork water chemistry by decreasing pH and increasing cations and sulfate in solution. Flushing of perched aquifers within fractured coalbeds was indicated as the cause of this drainage chemistry change. Paradoxically lower iron concentrations in South Fork than the other streams is best explained by lack of photoreactivity recycling. A well developed canopy covered this stream reducing sunlight energy input. Aluminum remained solubilized in South Fork until confluence with North Fork since pH never rose above 5.2. Aluminum hydroxide precipitate formed a remarkable white streambed covering throughout the confluence mixing zone. This precipitate is hypothesized to be responsible for reduced organism numbers collected at Sand Lick station

Composite microstructures and climate change

posterDevelop mathematical models to better understand the changes in sea ice as it pertains to global climate. Compare Diffusion Limited Aggregates (DLA) and Electrorheological (ER) fluids to sea ice microstructures

Role of YAP and TAZ in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and in stellate cells associated with cancer and chronic pancreatitis.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is characterized by a fibrotic and inflammatory microenvironment that is formed primarily by activated, myofibroblast-like, stellate cells. Although the stellate cells are thought to contribute to tumorigenesis, metastasis and drug resistance of PDAC, the signaling events involved in activation of the stellate cells are not well defined. Functioning as transcription co-factors, Yes-associated protein (YAP) and its homolog transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) modulate the expression of genes involved in various aspects of cellular functions, such as proliferation and mobility. Using human tissues we show that YAP and TAZ expression is restricted to the centroacinar and ductal cells of normal pancreas, but is elevated in cancer cells. In particular, YAP and TAZ are expressed at high levels in the activated stellate cells of both chronic pancreatitis and PDAC patients as well as in the islets of Langerhans in chronic pancreatitis tissues. Of note, YAP is up regulated in both acinar and ductal cells following induction of acute and chronic pancreatitis in mice. These findings indicate that YAP and TAZ may play a critical role in modulating pancreatic tissue regeneration, neoplastic transformation, and stellate cell functions in both PDAC and pancreatitis

Radio Properties of Low Redshift Broad Line Active Galactic Nuclei

The question as to whether the distribution of radio-loudness in active galactic nuclei (AGN) is actually bimodal has been discussed extensively in the literature. Futhermore, there have been claims that radio-loudness depends on black hole mass and Eddington ratio. We investigate these claims using the low redshift broad line AGN sample of Greene & Ho (2007), which consists of 8434 objects at z < 0.35 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Fourth Data Release (SDSS DR4). We obtained radio fluxes from the Very Large Array Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters (FIRST) survey for the SDSS AGN. Out of the 8434 SDSS AGN, 821 have corresponding observed radio fluxes in the FIRST survey. We calculated the radio-loudness parameter (R) for all objects above the FIRST detection limit (1 mJy), and an upper limit to R for the undetected objects. Using these data, the question of radio bimodality is investigated for different subsets of the total sample. We find no clear demarcation between the radio-loud (RL, R > 10) and radio-quiet (RQ, R < 10) objects, but instead fill in a more radio-intermediate population in a continuous fashion for all subsamples. We find that 4.7% of the AGN in the flux-limited subsample are RL based on core radio emission alone. We calculate the radio-loud fraction (RLF) as both a function of black hole mass and Eddington ratio. The RLF decreases (from 13% to 2%) as Eddington ratio increases over 2.5 order of magnitude. The RLF is nearly constant (~5%) over 4 decades in black hole mass, except for an increase at masses greater than 10^8 solar masses. We find for the FIRST detected subsample that 367 of the RL AGN have black hole masses less than 10^8 solar masses, a large enough number to indicate that RL AGN are not a product of only the most massive black holes in the local universe.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures, accepted to A

Oxygen concentrator tube storage and sanitation device

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/96182/1/me450f12project5_report.pd

How To Build an Undervoting Machine: Lessons from an Alternative Ballot Design

Despite the importance of usability in ensuring election integrity, it remains an under-studied aspect of voting systems. Voting computers (a.k.a. DREs) offer the opportunity to present ballots to voters in novel ways, yet this space has not been systematically explored. We constructed a DRE that, unlike most commercial DREs, does not require voters to view every race, but instead starts at the “review screen” and lets voters directly navigate to races. This was compared with a more traditional, sequentially-navigated, DRE. The direct access navigation model had two effects, both of which were quite large. First, voters made omission (undervote) errors markedly more often. Second, voters who were free to choose who to vote for chose to vote in substantially fewer races. We also examined the relationship between the true error rate—which is not observable in real elections—and the residual vote rate, a measure of effectiveness commonly used for real elections. Replicating the findings of [Campbell and Byrne 2009a], the mean residual vote rate was close to the mean true error rate, but the correlation between these measures was low, suggesting a loose coupling between these two measures

Overdiagnosis and overtreatment over time

Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are often thought of as relatively recent phenomena, influenced by a contemporary combination of technology, specialization, payment models, marketing, and supply-related demand. Yet a quick glance at the historical record reveals that physicians and medical manufacturers have been accused of iatrogenic excess for centuries, if not millennia. Medicine has long had therapeutic solutions that search for ever-increasing diagnostic problems. Whether the intervention at hand has been leeches and lancets, calomel and cathartics, aspirins and amphetamines, or statins and SSRIs, medical history is replete with skeptical critiques of diagnostic and therapeutic enthusiasm. The opportunity cost of this profusion shapes the other side of the coin: chronic persistence of underdiagnosis and undertreatment. Drawing from key controversies of the 19th and 20th centuries, we chart the enduring challenges of inter-related diagnostic and therapeutic excess. As the present critique of overdiagnosis and overtreatment seeks to mobilize resources from inside and outside of medicine to rein in these impulses, we provide an instructive historical context from which to act